NFL owners face OT sessions as deadline looms on Trust

For only the second time in league history, NFL owners next month will formally
gather outside their normal rotation of meetings in order to discuss the looming
expiration of the league's commercial business model.

The 32 team owners can attend meetings Dec. 4 in Denver and/or Dec. 11 in Atlanta.
No votes will occur at these regional congregations, which are instead designed
to begin to build a consensus for how the league's commercial businesses will operate
after March.

The only other time the team owners met outside their regularly scheduled sequence
of meetings was two years ago, to debate divisional realignment.

Now the commercial and merchandise business, or NFL Trust, as it is called, is
the new spark for the extraordinary assemblies.

"Unlike all the other decisions the NFL makes, this does not lend itself to a
committee, where a committee gets together, makes a recommendation and the other
owners vote on it," said sports consultant Marc Ganis, who is close to several teams.

At the Chicago meetings last month, the owners made slim progress on reaching
a consensus on how the 40-year-old Trust should be continued. With the next owners
meetings scheduled for late March, when the Trust expires, the owners essentially
needed more time together.

The NFL's success has been in part a result of selling sponsorship and media
commercial rights on a collective basis and dividing the proceeds evenly.

But over the last few years the league has allowed teams to sell once off-limit
sponsorship categories, and now the question is whether that trend will continue
with the Trust renewal.

Some clubs are worried that the growing revenue disparity between teams in new
and older stadiums could be exacerbated if additional sponsorship rights, particularly
sideline deals, are granted to the individual clubs.

Also, clubs in low-density markets would like to lift the prohibition against
teams promoting outside a 75-mile radius.

The league expects to vote to continue the Trust in some form in late March and
early April at its annual meeting in Palm Beach, Fla.

Ganis pointed out that the NFL requires a unanimous vote to renew the Trust,
though individual teams theoretically could opt out. It also is unclear if the Trust
would be renewed for another 20-year term, or for a different period of time.